Site Visit 5/20

Over the past few days, I've collected pictures documenting the life cycle of trash in Cagliari. The picture above shows the various trash and recycling containers in the city. Similarly, the images below show different trash collection containers that I came across while exploring the city.

This picture shows a typical garbage collection truck in the city.

Here's the first picture I took at the recycling plant we visited. This front loader was organizing the waste and feeding a machine that bound the trash into rectangular, easily-movable clusters.

This is the process engineer who gave us a tour of the facilities. Here he is showing us the properties of recycled cardboard and how you can tell if cardboard is recycled by examining the layers.

After being bound into rectangular clusters, the paper waste was stacked in a large warehouse.

The other side of the warehouse. In the back there is a machine called the "pulper" which broke down the paper into a soupy, liquid pulp to be processed. 

A forklift organizing the warehouse.

This is one of the machines that dramatically reduces the water content in the pulp to create the paper.

This machine ran the paper sheets through a dryer to further reduce the moisture content in the paper and send the finished product to a roller on which the paper is collected.

This shot shows the roller which collects the paper after exiting the dryer.

The composting warehouse.

The massive composting pit.

This picture is from the waste-to-energy facility. This particular photo shows the rotating incinerator that burns the trash.

A worker collecting ash from the machine.

Just outside the building.

The cooling tower.

Inside the waste-to-energy plant.

This last picture was taken just outside of a huge room full of trash that is ready to be moved into the plant. It was by far the most trash I have ever seen in one place, and it was awfully smelly. To put it in perspective, the claw that collected the trash (much like one of those claw games in arcades where you use a joystick to control the claw to pick up toys) weighed 5 tons and could pick up 5 tons of trash with every grab.